


Laying Dynamite

by egoat



Category: Red Dead Redemption
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 20:58:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17190287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/egoat/pseuds/egoat
Summary: Arthur sorts his thoughts. May have additional parts later.





	Laying Dynamite

Laying Dynamite  
  
    “riding on”  
  
    Arthur felt as his end approached that his mind was all but spent. He didn’t know much about the brain, and never really believed he had a particularly sharp one, but he had a keen notion his disease had worn it down to its end. His mind was a mess, a jumble of frayed and tattered strands, and he felt that he was always swimming behind the rushing flow of his life.  
    And yet, in a way, death had freed him. As he found himself thinking less of survival (or not at all, to tell the truth), he realized how much of his life he had spent just trying to survive. How much bad he had done in the name of surviving a little bit longer, going a little farther down the line. It didn’t make a difference in the end–he knew that now, but he wished he had known it sooner. Wished he had acted like a man when he had the chance. He could have been a person, a real person, to his son. Could have protected him, changed him. Now he was dead in the ground, same as most everyone that ever knew Arthur.  
    Everything could have been different, that was all he could think about now. His mind was buckling under the pressure of all the weight it had taken on, and it burned hot with the pain of remembering. The pain of seeing every life he took, every little flash, however brief, he saw of men he barely knew turned into so much dirt by his gun. All those lawmen, all those crooks, all those innocent bystanders, those must have been hundreds, even thousands, of men he barely knew.  
    And there were those he knew well, of course, the men that had trusted in him and Dutch, the men that depended on them for everything, those men he had watched die the most. He had watched them die quickly in the streets, bullets to the head–Hosea, Lenny, Sean. He had watched them bleed out, succumb to the cold, walk until they couldn’t walk any longer. Davey, Mac, every kid who wandered into Dutch’s gang and couldn’t keep up, the same fate for them every time.  
    Arthur knew now it was the same fate that awaited all of them. These, which Dutch had told him were unfortunate accidents, rare mistakes, he finally came to see were law. Death was the rule, and those of them that were still living, the outliers, would meet it soon enough. They couldn’t keep dodging it forever–there were always more Pinkertons, more law, more against them, and there were always less of them. As long as Dutch kept leading them on, there wouldn’t be any safety for any of them, and Arthur was attending each one of them to their graves.  
    It made him want to ask why, why’d he keep on going with it all, why he bought lie after lie, delay after lay, scheme after plan after heist with Dutch coming out with nothing but losses and enough to keep the rest of them going. Truthfully, he already knew why. Arthur knew the power of a gun. He knew the weight of it in his hands, the cold steel pulled back against his fingertip. He knew the fate of every man who would come up against his–he knew none of them stood a chance. He knew just what that fate would look like, the expression of shock, the howl of final pain. He knew the lesson of each death, the one Dutch had always told them to take from each of those kills, the same as with man or animal That they were weak, and you were strong, and you had done what you needed to to survive.  
    It was all a damn lie. None of their killings were needed, certainly not their feuds or their robberies. It was a lie Arthur just wanted to believe–it was the lie that made what already felt good feel just. When you had the gun in your hand, your finger on the trigger, you were in control. You were a gunslinger, and the master of your own destiny. How couldn’t it be true, the way you held life and death in the palm of your hand? How couldn’t it feel right? How couldn’t you feel like a hero, like a man?  
    It took Arthur too long to see he wasn’t a goddamn man at all, at least any decent kind of one. He was now, as he had been for some time, an old man, bound for death, making mistakes worse than the last. He had wasted his life chasing thrills; now, all he wanted was something real, so, so badly. And he could have had it, he knew, in fact, he could have had it at so many moments. And he still believed, maybe a bit, that he could still have it.  
    That was what hurt the most. Each dream, he knew, was all useless pain, the clutter that filled the last thoughts of a regretful old sap, but he couldn’t stop himself. He wanted to believe in them. He was, at his very end, too damn gullible for his own good. He still just wanted to write the next damn pulp starring himself–he wanted to write himself a little riding away into the sunset. And so he experienced, over and over, heartbreaks of his own creation, as he dreamed up and let himself fall into these little miniature tragedies.  
    They started the same, all reliant on a series of impossibly lucky coincidences. He could get his hands on Dutch’s stash, make away with it, and ride out west. All it took to get through this sickness was rest and relaxation in a warm, dry, climate, or at least that’s what that doctor told him. He could get that. He could get even a little home for himself, out there, back in the West, where he really belonged. He could have a small little homestead, to himself, could surely live a relaxed life off of the riches Dutch had collected from the gang these last years. There, he could heal. He would take a different name, and he would live a different life, a good, decent, quiet one.  
    The fantasies would diverge from there. Most of the time, he would find himself writing to Mary, or else bumping into her by some extreme coincidence, tell him how he had changed, and she would come out, they’d have a chance to live the sort of life that she wanted.  
    That’s what Arthur had been telling himself he wanted all these years, and, well, he did want that. He always had. There were times he had believed, and he had probably been right, that it wasn’t worth it to keep trying at it, but he had never stopped wanting her back. He had never been able to stop loving her, or anyone else. He wasn’t able to stop loving Dutch, even if he never cared about anyone else. He couldn’t stop loving Isaac. Or Sean, or Lenny, or Hosea, or Davey, or Copper, or any other names it only brought him pain to think of. His mind burned with the pain of loving, endlessly, infinitely, those that could never love him back, could never hear his voice again, would never be seen by him again. As his life became all the while more lonely and dark, in the quiet of the ride or in the twilight hours when he tried to drift to sleep while looking up at a sky full of stars, his mind was searing itself with loves that could never, would never, be returned.  
     _John Marston_.  
    There was little John Marston, the twelve year old kid about to be hung to death for being a robber. The perfect thief. Dutch knew as much, they all knew as much. The kid was a natural at trouble–getting himself into it, getting himself out of it. If they hadn’t’ve happened on that farm, he would have wiggled his way out anyway–at least, that’s what Arthur had thought.  
    In his time of recollection, it had started to seem to him that maybe John wasn’t ever all that lucky. In fact, he was decidedly unlucky, at least as much as any of their sorry lot were. Probably more. Started off with a sad excuse for a father, an angry old drunk who got both his eyes tore out in a fight, and a prostitute for a mother. Maybe he was bound to fall into trouble.  
    Then, sent to live off in some orphanage. And God, from what little John has told Arthur about that place over the years, he ought to thank heaven Jack never had to end up in one of those places. He made it out alive, by being mean, by stealing, by being tough and vicious and ready to survive.  
    The thought Arthur couldn’t shake about John was that he was never, well, he certainly wasn’t quite Dutch. He wasn’t Micah. He was good at thieving and shooting, as good as any of them, but whatever Dutch and the rest of them saw in him as a natural thief, well, maybe they were just seeing someone eager to do anything to survive. Maybe they saw what could have been a man and they tried their best to make him into a rat.  
    The thing is, none of it took. Not really. Arthur tried to make the case for it, he really did. Concocted all manner of stories, little ideas, about what he might have been up to when he went and ran off. Working for the O’Driscolls, telling stories to the Pinkertons. He discussed all of these with Hosea, some of them with Dutch, even. Might have gotten them both ready to shoot the man on sight.  
    And yet he came back, and Dutch was ready to call him loyal again. Dutch, for all his madness, he could see people, read them, better than just about anyone Arthur knew. And he was right. There wasn’t an ounce of rat in John. He was all good. But he was scared. And he was right to have been. Hell, he never should have come back. He had a chance right then to get a real start over, the kind that Arthur could now only fantasize about. And he went and threw it away to be loyal to the bastards who had made a fool out of him for all his life. To this thieving, drunken band of scoundrels, who would use him for another shooting arm and throw him out the next day.  
    When Arthur gave some serious thought to it, being saved that day by them was probably just about the worst thing that ever could have happened to him. Every second he spent here, every second he spent running with Dutch and Arthur, was another second that they were running out what little luck John had left.  
    What Arthur ought to do, what he could see was right with his clearer mind, was he ought to give John the same Irish goodbye he gave to Strauss. Kick him out, get him out of there before things got worse, which they surely would. He knew it was the right thing to do.  
    But he couldn’t let go. And there was another fantasy that his mind wove, over and over, in the reveries of his dreams and in the wanderings of his lost and sick mind when he rode across the plains and the hills and mountains of this forsaken world.  
    There was him seeing John Marston out of the camp in the dead of night. They would go, while the rest of camp slept, acting in silent and complete understanding, to grab Dutch’s treasure hoard, and split it between their saddlebags and trot out of camp. They would speed up, gradually, until they were hoofing across the plains. They were going west, west, west. Their journey carried them south through the hills, through the swamps of Lagray, west further still, going through Rhodes, north through Emerald, back through Valentine. They would tear on, without stopping, through West Elizabeth. They wouldn’t say a word.  
    In the west, in the countryside that was still un-tainted, they could have a different kind of life. They would get a little house. They would live carefully, looking after each other with an eagle eye. In those first days and weeks, they would keep lookout, always over each other’s backs, looking for Dutch on the horizon, ready to strike in revenge. But, ultimately, they would be safe. And they would settle, gradually. They would relax, ease up, let down their guard.  
    Arthur’s fantasies would end somewhere around there when he realized he couldn’t find a way to work in Abigail and Jack into this scenario.  
    And so, he rode on, his mind a bleary and uncollected haze, an old man pulling at needles until they drew blood, and he came to the bridge where John was waiting, with a wagon full of mining charges.


End file.
